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Biographical/Historical note
David H. Stevens was an influential staff member of the General Education Board (GEB) and Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) Division of the Humanities.
Born in Wisconsin in 1884, Stevens earned a B.A. (1906) and an M.A. (1910) from Lawrence University. He taught briefly at Northwestern University before moving on to earn an M.A. from Harvard University in 1912 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in 1914.
Following the completion of his doctorate, Stevens remained at the University of Chicago, rising through the ranks of the English department to become a full professor in 1925. He was also active in University administration, holding positions as Dean of the College of Arts, Literature and Science from 1920 to 1922 and Associate Dean of Faculties in 1929. His academic career was briefly interrupted in 1918 when he served in the Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army during World War I.
In 1930 Stevens left the University of Chicago to join the GEB as vice president, a post he held until 1938. He helped to expand the work of the GEB into the northern states during the Great Depression. In 1932 Stevens took on perhaps his most important position when he was named Director of the Humanities Division of the RF. As the first full-time director, Stevens had a huge impact in shaping the direction of the humanities program of the RF. His seventeen-year tenure saw the foundation undertaking new initiatives in the fields of drama, radio, film, linguistics, literature and history. Stevens and his associate, John Marshall, moved the RF away from its funding of classical studies and archaeology, refocusing the Foundation's efforts on creative fields and international cultural exchanges.
Following his retirement in 1949, Stevens returned to scholarly pursuits as a research associate at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Stevens died in California in 1980 at the age of 95. His passion for the humanities was evident through a life's work that helped to shape the field and the broader cultural life of the United States.
David H. Stevens recounted his career in Robert E. Gard's A Time of Humanities; An Oral History: Recollections of David H. Stevens as Director in The Division of the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation, 1930-50.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
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Kenneth Winfred Thompson was a pioneering international relations scholar with a long and varied career in philanthropy and higher education. He spent more than two decades working for the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), rising through the ranks of the Social Sciences Division and into the role of vice president.
Thompson was born on August 29, 1921, in Des Moines, Iowa. He completed his B.A. in history (1943) at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and served in the U.S. Army in infantry and military intelligence during World War II. He went on to earn his M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1950) in political science and international relations at the University of Chicago.
Thompson began his career in academia, first as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and then as an Associate Professor and Chairman of the International Relations Committee at Northwestern University. He began working for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1953 as a consultant in International Relations, and left his position at Northwestern University in 1955 to become the Foundation's assistant director for Social Sciences. He quickly earned promotions within the RF, becoming associate director for Social Sciences in 1957, director of Social Sciences in 1960, and vice president in 1961.
As a scholar, Thompson was an influential theorist of international relations; as a Rockefeller Foundation officer, he worked tirelessly to foster the development of the international relations discipline. Thompson organized and nurtured the Foundation's International Relations Program (IRP), which began informally in 1955 with grants-in-aid for early career scholars in the emerging discipline. With Thompson's persistence, the program was formally established in December 1960 to provide grants to individual scholars researching foreign policy, diplomatic history, and international relations theory. The IRP was modeled on an earlier Foundation initiative, the Legal and Political Philosophy (LAPP) program. As with the IRP, Thompson's ability to foster and promote exciting new scholarship played a critical role in the LAPP program's success. Notable grantees included Hannah Arendt, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George F. Kennan, John Rawls, H. J. Morgenthau, Leo Strauss, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
Thompson remained an active scholar during his years at the Rockefeller Foundation. He held endowed lectureships at New York City's Riverside Church (1958), Duke University (1959), and New York University (1962), and authored several books including Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy (1959), Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (1960), American Diplomacy and Emergent Patterns (1962), and The Moral Issue in Statecraft (1966). A 1961 Rockefeller Foundation profile observed that Thompson "continued his work in the field as a scholar and speaker at a rate that, even by those whose only profession is scholarship, must be considered just slightly this side of awesome."
Thompson is perhaps best known for the third phase of his career, after leaving the RF in 1974. Thompson resumed his academic career as a professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. In 1978, he became Director of UVA's Miller Center of Public Affairs, a nonpartisan institute devoted to the study of the presidency and political history. He played an integral role in creating the Center's Presidential Oral History Program and the Forum Program speaker series, and he held this position until his retirement in 1998. Over the course of his career, Thompson wrote and edited more than forty books and countless articles about international relations, foreign policy, diplomacy, and presidential history.
Kenneth Thompson died in February 2013 at the age of 91.
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Biographical/Historical note
Gerald Ion Trant was born in 1928 and died in 1999.
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Biographical/Historical note
George E. Vincent, second president of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), was born in 1864 in Rockford, Illinois.
He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1885. Following graduation, he worked for the Chautauqua Institution which provided flexible adult education courses and home study programs for adults. The Chautauqua movement was initiated in New York by George Vincent's father, Methodist Bishop John H. Vincent.
In 1892 Vincent began work as a graduate student in the sociology department at the University of Chicago. While there, he and department chair, Albion Small co-authored Introduction to the Study of Sociology, the first sociology textbook to be published in the U.S. Vincent completed his dissertation, "Social Mind and Education," and received his Ph.D. in 1896. He remained at the University of Chicago as a teaching fellow and attained a full professorship in sociology in 1904. He later served as dean of the Junior College and the College of Arts, Literature and Sciences.
In 1911 Vincent accepted a position as president of the University of Minnesota, where he spent the next six years cementing the University"s reputation as a major research institution. Vincent also created the University's Extension Division for adult education and helped to create a partnership between the medical school and the Mayo Foundation.
In 1917 Vincent was named president of the RF, a post he held for twelve years. As president he supported the continued expansion of the RF's public health activities, including the creation of the RF's Division of Medical Education, which was responsible for improving medical education outside of the U.S. Vincent also initiated programs in the natural sciences and oversaw a major reorganization of the Foundation into five divisions in 1928. In addition to his role as RF President and Trustee, Vincent was a member of the General Education Board (GEB), Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and the China Medical Board (CMB).
Throughout his career Vincent remained a member of the American Sociological Society, which he helped found in 1895, and also contributed his time as an editor of the American Journal of Sociology.
George E. Vincent passed away in February of 1941 after a lifetime of influential work in the fields of education, sociology, and philanthropy.
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Biographical/Historical note
Sydnor H. Walker worked with the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM) and the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) Division of the Social Sciences, helping to shape research in the social sciences over the course of two decades.
Walker was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1891. She received an A.B. in economics from Vassar College in 1913 and an M.A. from the University of Southern California in 1917.
She returned to Vassar in 1917, where she served as an instructor in economics. A colleague commented that Walker was appreciated by the students for "her quick wit and gaiety...although she could be sharply critical of the careless and the dilatory."[1] In 1919 Walker left her teaching position to join an industrial relations consulting firm headed by Beardsley Ruml. She subsequently went abroad to Vienna and Russia to aid in European relief with the American Friends Service Committee.
Upon her return to the U.S. in 1924, Walker was recruited by Ruml to work for the LSRM as a research associate. She was a staunch advocate of using scientific and standardized methods to conduct research in the social sciences. While working for the LSRM, Walker continued her studies at Columbia University, receiving her Ph.D. in economics in 1928. Her dissertation, "Social Work and the Training of Social Workers," was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1928.
When many of LSRM's programs were consolidated with the RF in 1929 and a new Division of the Social Sciences created, Walker became Assistant Director of the division. She was promoted to Associate Director in 1933 and Acting Director in 1937. Among her interests at the RF, she was a proponent of improving the teaching of social work and the administration of social welfare programs. Her grant-making extended to many southern universities. She also contributed to the development of the social sciences outside the U.S., working with grantees in Europe and Latin America.
Resigning from the RF in 1943 for health reasons, she worked on a report for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, "The First Hundred Days of the Atomic Age," which was published in 1945.
She served as a trustee for Vassar College from 1939-1943 and was appointed assistant to the president of Vassar College in 1948, a position she held until 1957.
Sydnor H. Walker passed away in 1966.
[1] Josephine Gleason et al. "Sydnor Harrison Walker: A Memorial Minute," Vassar Faculty Meeting, December 1966, Biographical Files Collection, Vassar College Archives, Vassar Libraries.
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Biographical/Historical note
In his nearly three decades of leadership of the natural sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), Warren Weaver contributed substantially to the mid-century revolution in biology and agricultural science. Over a lifetime dedicated to building bridges across the sciences, he also contributed significantly to mathematics, statistics, physics, computer science, and scientific associations.
Warren Weaver was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin in 1894. He received his B.A. and Ph.D., as well as a Certificate of Engineering, from the University of Wisconsin. He served in the Army in World War I and taught mathematics at Throop College of Technology (now the California Institute of Technology) until 1920. Later that year, at the request of his mentor, physics professor Max Mason, Weaver joined the mathematics department at University of Wisconsin and chaired the department from 1928 – 1932. Together, in 1929, Mason and Weaver wrote the classic physics textbook, The Electromagnetic Field.
In 1932, Mason, now president of the RF, persuaded Weaver to lead the Foundation's programs in natural sciences. Weaver's insight and intellectual risktaking led him to focus funding on scientific endeavors at early stages of development. With support from the Foundation, he developed a new program in experimental biology. At the same time, he identified opportunities for interdisciplinary work across the biological and physical sciences that resulted in the new field of molecular biology (which Weaver named).
On leave to serve in the Air Force in World War II, Weaver organized the fire-control section of the National Defense Research Committee. A singularly important development, resulting from collaboration with Bell Telephone Laboratories, was the electrical antiaircraft device. Weaver then organized the Applied Mathematics Panel where interdisciplinary teams of mathematicians, economists and statisticians developed innovative techniques in sequential analysis and operations research.
Having returned to the RF after the war, Weaver contributed to the development and expansion of the "Green Revolution" when agriculture was added to his portfolio in 1950. RF's agriculture programs not only supported breakthrough research on new, more productive varieties of corn, wheat and rice, they also contributed to training and institutional development, elements that Weaver knew were critical for ensuring long term success.
In 1954, he became Vice President for Natural and Medical Sciences. Upon retiring from the RF five years later, he served as vice president of the Alfred P Sloan Foundation from 1959 to 1964 and trustee from 1956-1964.
Outside his foundation work, Weaver served on the genetics panel for the National Academy of Sciences, authoring a pioneering report on the biological effects of radiation. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1928 and president in 1954. He was also a trustee and board chair of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
In 1963, his passion for probability led him to publish a book for the non-mathematical public, Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability. An aficionado of Lewis Carroll, Weaver published in 1964, Alice in Many Tongues, explaining the challenges of translating Alice in Wonderland into nearly 40 languages.
In recognition of Warren Weaver's extraordinary contributions to the Rockefeller Foundation and to the pursuit of science, in 1989, the Foundation instituted the Warren Weaver Fellows Program. The fellows have been talented individuals who, during one-year residencies, have contributed fresh perspectives on the Foundation's work in specific program areas.
Warren Weaver died in 1978 at the age of 84 in New Milford, Connecticut.
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In his four decades with the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) from 1943 to 1983, Edwin Wellhausen played a central role in the Foundation's agricultural work in Mexico and in international agricultural development more broadly. Wellhausen's distinguished career included leading both the Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico (known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT).
Wellhausen was born on September 10, 1907 in Fairfax, Oklahoma. He earned his B.S. in plant pathology from University of Idaho (1932), and his Ph.D. in genetics and plant breeding from Iowa State University (1936). After completing his doctorate, Wellhausen was a General Education Board Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Department of Physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and then worked briefly for Agricultural Experiment Stations at Montana State College and West Virginia University.
In 1943, Mexican Agricultural Program Local Director (and future RF President) J. George Harrar selected Wellhausen to head the MAP's corn breeding efforts. Because corn was integral to the Mexican diet, his work focused on both boosting corn yields and developing hybrids that would improve Mexico's long-term corn production. After a decade leading the corn breeding program, Wellhausen succeeded Harrar as MAP Local Director, and held the position until 1958.
Wellhausen worked tirelessly to foster international cooperation toward the improvement of agricultural research and production. From 1959-1963, he was Director of the Inter-American Maize Improvement Program, which led to the establishment in 1963 of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico (CIMMYT), headquartered in Mexico City. Wellhausen served as CIMMYT's first Director General.
Wellhausen retired in June 1973, but spent the next decade as a Special Field Staff Member working on a variety of RF Latin American assignments. He continued to foster the development of international research institutes, counseled international governments and agricultural institutions, and consulted for the International Agricultural Development Service (IADS). He retired fully from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1983, when the Foundation closed its Mexico field office.
Over the course of his career, Wellhausen published dozens of articles about corn production, developed more than 60 hybrids and varieties of corn, and trained Latin American agronomists in the breeding and production of the crop. He received several awards and honors from the international community in recognition of his efforts. In 1969, the Mexican government awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, First Class, the highest decoration granted to foreigners.
Edwin Wellhausen died on January 7, 2001.
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